Author: Andrew Sullivan

A reader writes:

You're right on just about everything you say about Journo-List, with one glaring, rather obnoxious (to me) misstep. You say, "This is your liberal media, ladies and gentlemen: totally partisan, interested in the truth only if it advances their agenda, and devoid of any balls whatsoever." While I can't disagree that the media is partisan and lacks any substantive cojones, it's silly to me to call them "liberals." These aren't liberals; these are Democrats.

Those in the media, particularly in print and television, already have proven to be as reactionary as Republican "conservatives." As there is little you find conservative about Republicans, there is little I find liberal about the reactionaries in the media.

Wiktionary has a great definition of the word "liberal" that gels with my understanding of the term: "Free from prejudice or narrow-mindedness; open-minded, open to new ideas, willing to depart from established opinions, conventions etc." What the Journo-List e-mails prove is that the supposed "liberals" were nothing like this. They were prejudiced against the Republican candidate (for good reason, but that's not the job of journalists); they were unwilling to depart from their groupthink; and most egregiously, they were (and obviously are) narrow-minded enough to put a political party and its candidate(s) ahead of their responsibility to the public.

Call them Democrats; call them irresponsible; call them cowards; call them incompetent and fucking impotent hacks. But one thing they aren't are liberals; no real liberal would ever be as opposed to the truth as these assholes were and are.

Maybe that's why they call themselves "progressives." By all means necessary ….

AdFreak files one for BrewDog:

… a Scottish craft brewery that has just released perhaps the most masculine product ever invented: a beer that contains 55 percent alcohol and comes packaged inside a taxidermied rodent. It costs £500 (about $760) per bottle and is called The End of History. PETA has yet to weigh in, but an Advocates for Animals rep calls the brew "a perverse idea" and adds: "People should learn to respect [animals] rather than using them for some stupid marketing gimmick."

A reader writes:

I was listening this morning to NPR discuss the Khmer Rouge trial. At one point they said, "Duch was often present during the brutal interrogations, where the detained were subjected to electric shock, mock drownings, and had their fingernails and toenails pulled out."  Italics are mine. When I heard that, I thought, "I wonder if they are talking about waterboarding?" Then, sure enough, I read your post where you quote the AP. 

NPR uses the word torture early in the story, but when it comes to description, we can't associate "waterboarding" with the word "torture", so now we call it "mock drowning".  One news outlet calls it torture, and one calls it "brutal interrogation".  Sad.

(Photo: A Cambodian nun lines up to attend the verdict in the trial of former Khmer Rouge prison chief of S-21, Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch, at the Extraordinary Chamber in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) in Phnom Penh on July 26, 2010. Cambodia's UN-backed war crimes court is set to give its verdict on Duch, in a step towards justice for the 'Killing Fields' atrocities more than three decades ago. By Tang Chhin Sothy/AFP/Getty Images.)

Now it's getting scary:

Randall Terry has announced a four-city series of demonstrations in South Carolina where protesters plan to “burn, hang, or beat” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) for his recent vote supporting Elena Kagan’s nomination to the Supreme Court. In a press release, Terry explains that the effigy tour is necessary because Kagan supporters are the “enemy” of God:

“If a man brings the enemy into your camp, he is helping the enemy; when he helps the enemy, he has become the enemy, and must be treated as such. Mr. Graham has betrayed God and innocent babies; we must treat him as a fraud and a traitor from this moment forth. “On a lighter note, since Mr. Graham uses babies as pawns in his game of politics, we will play some ‘games’ in front of his offices, such as ‘pin the flip-flop’ on the donkey, and beating a Graham pinata. We promise – it will be a lot of fun.”

The "female dog" thing is also a charming attempt to smear with a homophobic brush.

Schneier is astute:

An article from The Economist makes a point that I have been thinking about for a while: the modern technology makes life harder for spies, not easier. It used to be the technology favored spycraft — think James Bond gadgets — but more and more, technology favors spycatchers. The ubiquitous collection of personal data makes it harder to maintain a false identity, ubiquitous eavesdropping makes it harder to communicate securely, the prevalence of cameras makes it harder to not be seen, and so on.

Remember all those liberals and lefties huffily denouncing this blog's attempts to make sense of Sarah Palin's bizarre stories about the pregnancy and birth of her alleged fifth child? I was nuts, crazy, vile, disgusting, etc etc to indulge in what Dave Weigel, with no working knowledge of the story, calls "nonsense." You may also recall that the liberal media didn't touch this with a barge-pole  – and still hasn't (apart from a NYT puff-piece that I found utterly credulous at the time). Newsweek has even put its entire reputation behind the details of the story as outlined in Going Rogue, without doing any independent reporting on the subject.

Well, we now know, that, for some at least, I wasn't crazy. I was just not disciplined enough to curtail what this blog airs in order to conform with what many Journo-listers believed were the interests of the Obama campaign. Any delusions that Journo-List was not, in part, a collusory venture to shape the media narrative in ways to benefit Obama, above and beyond ferreting out the truth about any and all candidates, must now be abandoned. Ezra Klein has already been caught in a bald-faced lie about his discretion in picking members; and the notion that this was simply a water-cooler collection of journalistic thoughts is also belied by the emails now published by the Daily Caller.

One should say this, however: I have no way of knowing what the DC has omitted, and how it has shaped this information. The thread stops rather abruptly. Maybe there is context that adds to what we know. I do not trust in any way the ethics of the Daily Caller. Nonetheless, I was obviously not alone in those August days, when I was pilloried for saying out loud what the entire chattering class was saying in private. Check these quotes out. First Ezra, setting down the line:

Seriously, folks? Best case scenario, what’s your outcome here: Her daughter, hounded by the tabloids, breaks down that it was her child, and her mother heroically took on the burden and welcomed the disabled boy as one of her own? Palin’s relationship with her children — however they may have come to her — strikes me as pretty far out of bounds. By all accounts she’s a wonderful mother, and devoted to her fifth son. Leave this be.

If you want to know why the allegedly liberal media didn't touch – and still won't touch – this story, look no further. It has nothing to do with the facts, and everything to do with their politics. Notice the core modus operandi of the political operative, not the journalist. When dealing with a story: first ask yourself not if it is true but whether the outcome benefits your side. Second, write things in defense of this that you cannot possibly know. Palin a "wonderful mother"? How on earth did Klein know that? 

Here's Katha Pollitt, untroubled by the possible truth:

I like what you said about this possibly being a dirty trick, intended to blow up in our faces. so let’s just leave it alone…

Mark Schmitt:

“We” don’t have to do any digging. There’s enough reason for suspicion that the entire GOP research team is probably off the Obama-Biden job for the weekend to figure out what they don’t know, but should have, about Sarah Palin.

Actually, we know that the McCain team never asked her about this at all – and still don't know. They just played the simple denial game, demanded deference, worked out an agreement with the liberal media not to inquire into the story, and never, ever asked about it. But they sure felt that there was something fishy here. Laura Rozen:

seriously, if her water broke and the baby was what two months premature, it doesn’t seem normal to have not gone straight to the nearest hospital. again, if the official story is true. but that just doesn’t make any sense.

Er, yes – but if a story doesn't make sense and inquiring into it might backfire, the liberal journalists won't inquire. "Leave this be" comes the instructions from Ezra, and leave this be they dutifully did. Lamar Robertson:

all right. this is getting way fishy now. 1) getting onto the plane TO ALASKA after your water breaks? i’m sorry. that does not happen. i live 2 minutes from the hospital. my wife went to the hospital immediately after her water broke w/ my second child and it was almost too late to get the epidural. 2) the baby was 6 lbs, 2 oz? That’s a healthy sized baby for a preemie. it’s also incongruous w/ the notion that she — a thin person — wasn’t showing at 7 months.

Paul Waldman:

If the date on this photo from the Anchorage Daily News web site is correct, she is absolutely, positively, not seven months pregnant.

Kathleen Geier:

When I first heard this story, I thought it was preposterous. (And btw, a scenario similar to this lurid tale occurred last season on Desperate Housewives). And maybe I really am losing it, driven over the edge at last by my hatred of all things Republican, but at this point I’m starting to believe it.

All great points. Especially the latter. But nothing was to be aired in public, for fear of backlash from the right. 

This is your liberal media, ladies and gentlemen: totally partisan, interested in the truth only if it advances their agenda, and devoid of any balls whatsoever. And people wonder how this farce of a candidate now controls one major political party and could well be our next president. One reason is that we do not have a functioning adversarial media uncorrupted by partisan loyalty and tactics.

(See my update here.)

In case you were suffering from an excess of optimism this morning, Bruce Bartlett has the cure:

What happens if we have a double-dip next year? Is it realistic to think that any stimulus at all is possible on the fiscal side? Given the likelihood of Republican gains in the November elections and the strong Republican incentive to make the economy as bad as possible going into 2012, I don’t think it would even be possible to pass a stimulus package that was 100% composed of tax cuts—the only stimulus Republicans might support.

The war is over, apparently, and we already won it. This is the kind of utopianism that now passes for analysis on the right, with respect to the fiasco of Iraq.

Blumenthal takes a look at the poll from last week showing Democrats resurgent. Bottom line:

The case for true “jump” in Democratic performance on the generic House ballot is weak. If we add the context of other recent polls, it gets weaker still. Their results scatter around a dead-heat margin in ways that are more or less consistent with their typical house effects on the generic ballot.

As always, more data next week will likely settle the issue, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see the next move in Gallup’s weekly tracking in the Republican direction, not because of real-world events but rather due to what statisticians call a reversion to the mean.

Oriental, North Carolina, 6.47 pm